


A Valediction

by marguerieteporete



Category: The Comfortable Courtesan - Madame C- C-
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:27:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21794527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marguerieteporete/pseuds/marguerieteporete
Summary: A small fragment of time, set just before the resumption of the series after the time-jump.
Relationships: Lord G- R-/Mr MacD (The Comfortable Courtesan), Madame C-/Mrs F- (The Comfortable Courtesan)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 32
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	A Valediction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elstaplador](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/gifts).



> I couldn't hope to capture the unique narrative voice, but I hope that I have done justice to the characters, at least.
> 
> Character deaths are canonical and not graphic.

For you must not mourn.

A secretary does not grieve for his employer. A few days to be solemn in the face of death, certainly. Some concern about future prospects is reasonable, especially in a man now older. He will be missed, of course. But you cannot go into widow's weeds, you cannot withdraw from the living world, you cannot spend a year in black; for to the world you cannot be bereaved.

He had waved Gervase a distracted goodbye that morning, busy with a piece of criticism. He had expected to see him again in a few hours, and they had no social plans for that night, increasingly they did not, they would have spent it as they more often did now, a small supper in private, the evening together with books and newspapers, reading passages out loud to each other, talking of trivial things, or simply being quiet, the two of them, the home that was still such a miracle, so much beyond what he could ever have dreamed.

One of the things which only he knew, he thought, was how clever Gervase really was, what intellect he had all his life concealed, what a quick analytical mind; and so much more perceptive about people than Sandy would ever be, their subtle motives, their complications. Understanding them, and, even more than that, forgiving them, all their strange follies. He would sit with Gervase, and they would talk of these things, and there was no need for either of them to fear any more.

And then the men brought him in, dying. 

They were alone, those last moments; Gervase, somehow, saying something about private business, family, something to make the other men withdraw. And then even to speak of love seemed too little. No way to find those perfect final words.

_Ah well, my dear,_ said Gervase, his voice strangled by pain, but his ironic smile still, faintly, on his lips. _Hey ho, the wind and the rain._ The song at the end of the comedy. 

_Always, _he had said, holding that beloved hand. _Always. I was yours before we ever met. I am yours for eternity._ What eternity he meant, he did not know, and it did not then matter. And he observed, like one who must understand these things, the strange expulsion of the final breath, the pulse in the neck that slowly ceased.__

__And Mr MacDonald was composed, efficient, in control of the crisis. The doctor must be called, though there was no doubt what had happened. The families of the other driver, of the child in the street, must be spoken to. There were funeral arrangements to be made, the new viscount to be notified, letters to be sent. There were many things a secretary must do. What he must not do is fall on his knees and beg the non-existent God to turn this around, to kill him instead, not to leave him with a howling void where his heart had been. His face, his body, must show no sign._ _

__Somehow a great crowd of Gervase's fribbles came flooding into the house before his body was barely cold. Sandy was quite unsure whether this was something proper, or whether it was more of their strange and inappropriate fribble behaviour, though he suspected the latter. But they had cared for Gervase, and even if all they could talk about now was how skillfully he had handled the horses in the final crash, and how they would all, to a man, be most pleased to die in the same fashion, they meant no harm._ _

___Of course, they are all terrible fools,_ Gervase had said to him once. _But, Sandy, they are kind. There is no meanness in them at all, not a bit. And for some years – before you came, my love – that was the very best that I had.__ _

__So now they all clapped Mr MacDonald on the shoulder, and muttered, _So sorry, old man,_ and _He was a real ... champion driver, was he not?,_ and he tried to see the kindness, as Gervase would have done. Most of them, he is aware, believe him to be the viscount's bastard half-brother. A few of them, he thought, might know something more of the truth. In some of the silly faces, he could see the knowledge, unspoken, of a deeper sorrow._ _

__Sometimes, when they were in company, Gervase would look over at him, and there would be the slightest flicker in his dark eyes, the quickest movement of his brows, and all would be well. A tiny universe of understanding. Sandy had lived all his life in words, but they could speak to each other with a glance, the whisper of a smile, enclosed in the safety of their private world._ _

___But that's all one, our play is done._ _ _

__They had been so young. Gervase Revely, the new Lord Raxdell as he was then, striding across the lawn, laughing. Seeming at home in the world, in his strong lean body. This was not the man that Alexander MacDonald had imagined, when he had allowed himself, secretly, to imagine; he had supposed there might be someone more like himself, scholarly, reserved, not an offensively handsome viscount at the centre of a circle of frivolous admirers, an icon of wasteful fashion, a “famous whip”, whatever that nonsense might mean. But there Lord Raxdell was, and the air seemed to shine around him. So much Sandy had still to discover, the nightmares, the sly humour, the gentleness. It would take time for him to realize that this man's every act of kindness was a victory over old brutality, that the respect he showed alike to peers and servants was a goodness he had wrung from pain._ _

__Great drama they had made of it, for a while. Arguments and reconciliations, fears and secrets. Perhaps they had both supposed that this was what love required, what all the stories claimed was love. But in the end, after all, it was simple. Coffe and bread and cheese, shared memory, the holding of each other's privacy, the fine fabric of a life._ _

__A fabric now torn to shreds. And here he was alone, in the crowd of fribbles doing their true silly best, and somehow he had to go on into some sort of life. And you must not mourn._ _

__* * * *_ _

__He found himself at his desk, aimlessly picking up familiar objects and putting them down, trying to write more notes which must be written. He must write to Clorinda, he thought. He must do that quickly. And yet he was aware, somewhere in himself, that he was angry at her, angry not for any reason, but because she would be allowed to grieve Gervase in public, that she would be permitted to enact the loss of something which had never actually been hers, while Sandy must be discreet, silent, alone._ _

__But no. That was unfair. It is not only that she has always been their friend, his friend, that she has held their privacy all these years, helped him to understand himself, helped him learn how to love Gervase truthfully and deeply. All these things were true; but it was true as well that she herself had hidden as he must now. She had once – so many years ago, now – worn black for a year, for a marriage which had, in truth, been no more than a brief friendship, but she could never be Eliza Ferraby's widow. For Josiah, a sort of mourning had been possible; the story which the world knew was almost true, and, if not quite socially acceptable, at least something which could be quietly honoured. All through Eliza's long illness, at her death, forever after that, Clorinda could never let the world be aware that she had lost half her own heart._ _

__He could not say that he had ever understood it, how the three of them seemed so content with their arrangement, which perhaps only he and Gervase – besides Clorinda and the Ferrabys themselves -- had known in full. And Sandy had – he had to admit this – never quite overcome a slight fear of Eliza, kind though she obviously was. This sturdy and definite woman, her surprisingly long stride though she was not especially tall. She was so consistently amused, by life as a whole it seemed; he could never, perhaps, rid himself of the anxiety that he himself was amusing to her, in ways which reminded him too much of school, of the laughter at serious young MacDonald. This too was unfair. She had been kind in the truest way, a soul with anger, sometimes, but no malice. Clorinda loved her. She had been worthy of that love._ _

__He had always expected that somehow, at some time, currents of jealousy would appear, that some one of them would want the full devotion of one other, and yet it seemed that was never so. But, even within that equal affection, there had been between Clorinda and Eliza something most particular; within their odd and sometimes complicated household, the deep warmth when the two of them sat together in one room was unmistakeable._ _

__And Clorinda could not be widowed in the eyes of the world by Eliza's death. Though she could say that she had lost one who was as a sister to her, it was still not fully the truth. Clorinda knew what it meant, what he was living now._ _

___My dear Clorinda_ , he wrote, and then stopped. The words were impossible._ _

___You must know of the tragedy._ _ _

___I cannot speak now._ _ _

___You remain my dearest friend._ _ _

__This was by no means an acceptable note. But he sealed it and added it to the others._ _

__* * * *_ _

__At one point near dawn, that terrible first night, he thought, maybe old Matt Johnson would show up and ask him to solve some kind of mystery, and there then would be some reason to continue walking around._ _

__Then he thought, someday soon he would die, and who would solve mysteries then?_ _

__Perhaps little Hannah Roberts would take an interest in mysteries. She was clever enough. He could suggest that to her. If he were to see her again._ _

__Who would he see now? Would the children still know him? He had never thought to watch children grow up in his own household. They are not his, never have been. And whose, now, is he?_ _

__When the sun came up, he said to himself, he would find a way to be philosophical._ _


End file.
